


Connected

by GreyWeeknds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:18:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyWeeknds/pseuds/GreyWeeknds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn and Louis comes from different places and have never met each other, yet they feel the other person’s pain. </p><p>Zayn is poor and lives with his mother that’s struggling with paying the rent and feeding her kids, so she has to work double shifts so she can make it.</p><p>Louis is rich but his parents are never home. There is only one thing that he has always wished for, and it’s something that money can’t buy.</p><p>They feel how it itch badly in their fingers when Louis and Zayn comes nearer each other, and it doesn’t stop until they hold hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connected

Zayn is five when he feels it the first time.

His mother is working her double shift at the diner, and his sister is taking care of him and the baby. He has a cold, and his nose is really itchy.

The telly noise is on in the background, and his head starts to pound heavily suddenly. He doesn’t understand what’s going on with him, but he knows that there’s something that isn’t right. His heart hammers violently, and his hands are shaking.

He can’t even comprehend the reality, all he can feel is an invisible fist that’s hitting his shoulder hardly, and he can’t stop the silvery tears that slide down his rosy cheeks. The baby cries loudly as the water drops from his eyes hits the floor, and he can’t take the pain away that’s being etched into his body.

When his sister finally shows up after she’s been talking to her new boyfriend on the phone for hours, she notices the red mark on his skin. She asks him what has happened to him, but he only persists that it’s an invisible man that has hit him. In the end she just assumes that he has hurt himself when his shoulder hit the edge of the kitchen table, and that her little brother has just too much of an imagination.

 

Louis is seven when it first happens.

His mother is forcing him to stay with his nanny at home when she and her husband are heading out for their romantic honeymoon in the beautiful Paris.

He wants to follow them, and they don’t seem to be affected by his pleading and whining as he throws himself on the ground, clenching his fists as he hits them on the asphalt the hardest he can until he starts to bleed.

Sophie, the new nanny, is slowly starting to get annoyed as her white apron gets red blood stains on it when he grips it and waves goodbye to the black limousine that’s leaving him. The boy continues to sob, and mutters that she isn’t nearly as good as his mum and dad.

It isn’t until he starts to mock her for being poor when she gets enough and slaps his shoulder hardly.

She repents immediately, but it’s too late. The boy has lost his trust for her forever, and there’s a big red mark that is the evidence of the second that she lost it.

-

The first time when Louis feels it, he’s fourteen.

He is attending to a fancy business dinner with his stepfather. The older man is sitting and talking to a Chinese hubby who has a black and shiny suit with a red bowtie under his fat neck.

He’s having a really boring time, because he doesn’t understand a word they say. His stepfather is determent to speak with the man in Chinese even though he’s really at it. But he guesses that he’s doing all right, because both of the men is laughing highly as a delicious scent comes from their roast beef.

It’s when the boiled duck is severed on the table that he starts to feel it. His lungs feels punched out of air, and instead they’re filled with smoke. He drinks two big glasses of water to drown the dryness in his throat, but it doesn’t help. Despite his hopeless attempts, his tongue is craving for more water.

The two men notice the sudden change in the boy when he starts to cough loudly, gasping for air. He can breathe, and the foreign man thinks that he has swallowed a too big bite of the meet.

He feels two arms around his belly, and then they’re pushing out even more air from his body. He’s waving with his arms to make the man understand that isn’t helping Louis, that he actually is doing the complete opposite.

It ends with a scolding in the car of his dad that’s furious on him for making a big scene when they were going to sign the contract for the company.

 

Zayn is twelve when he tests a cigarette the first time.

He feels the eyes that are burning holes into his face as he fumbles with the white and orange fag between his thumb and index finger awkwardly. They’re waiting eagerly for him to take the first sip, but he’s scared of how his body is going to react.

What if his mother finds out? What if she smells the disgusting scent from his clothes when he comes home? She would be really disappointed that her only son that she thinks the world of is smoking, and she would surely never let him pass outside of the door again.

“C’mon Z, do it, be a man.” Dom says excitedly and his flame-coloured eyes shine brighter than the sun.

He gulps dramatically before he inhales the smoke timidly.

It doesn’t taste that bad to be honest, almost nothing. But then again, he might be wrong. Because Jen looks at him like he’s a little coward, and makes a charade that he has to blow it in harder.

He looks at the cigarette once more, and he really doesn’t want to do this, he wants to sit in the cheap apartment with his mum rocking him to sleep while she hums a sweet lullaby in his ear.

When he inhales it this time, he starts to cough. His body feels like it wants to be faced out, and his belly feels a bit warm. He was right when he said that it didn’t taste that bad, because it’s worse than bad, it’s motherfucking horribly disgusting.

His throat is really dry, and he gasps for breath, but nothing stops the feeling. It still feels like his entire inside is starting to mould, and that his body has aged thirty years in the past three seconds.

But he tries to hide away the most of his reaction, because Dom looks like he’s finally pleased with Zayn, and perhaps now he can be a part of their gang.

-

Zayn is thirteen when his mum has a heart attack.

She’s been working too hard ever since the new baby arrived, and his dad hasn’t yet come home from the war in Afghanistan. Zayn’s big sister is always out with her friends and looking for guys, and his little sis is craving a lot of attention because she’s determent that she’s a real princess and that her brother is her servant.

When Trisha is lying in the hospital bed, dressed in a white paper dress with blue dots, everybody seems to rely on Zayn. They say that he’s the man of the family now, and that he has to take care of them. But they don’t understand that he isn’t ready, he’s too young. His biggest aspiration is to impress Dom and the gang; he can’t handle to take care of three sisters and a sick mother.

There’s a slight pain in his belly, and he has to rub it so that it will disappear. But it doesn’t work, despite his failed attempts it only increases. There’s a big black hole, and he can’t fill it. He gasps for air, and he thinks that he’s having a heart attack or something at the moment.

The doctors have to give him pills to calm down, and they have to promise him to never tell his mum how big of a coward he is.

 

Louis is fifteen when he has his first panic attack.

He’s been worried sick for two weeks straight now over the speech he’s holding this afternoon. His palms are sweating and his tummy aches badly when he goes up the stage, meeting his teacher’s encouraging eyes.

Everybody knows that Louis is the biggest wimp when it comes to speeches, he always cries and run to the bathroom to throw up. But this time it’s different. He’s more than nervous today; and he’s slowly dying on the inside.

When he grips the paper with his fingers, he starts to see double. His sight is rocking back and forth, and nobody gets the time to catch him when he faints and falls down on the floor, cold and his trousers drenched in his own pee.

When his mum picks him up from the school nurse, she’s really disappointed at him. She’s not sure how her only son will ever be the right man to take over her and her husband’s company.

-

When Louis is eighteen, his teacher forces him to go to this town called Bradford where all the kids with no future live.

He’s certain that Louis’ essay about teen crimes will be even better than perfection if he actually sees poor people in action instead of watching them on the telly. But Louis doesn’t want to go there, it’s filthy and bad smelling, and there’s probably teen mums who works as hookers in the bright daylight.

When his limo drops him of, three middle age men that are standing in a corner greet him unfriendly. They’re looking at him with black eyes, and dark skin. He’s afraid that they’re caring some pocketknife on them, and that they’re only waiting to slice him up like pork.

Their fingers are dirty, and their chins are stubby. They look even scarier than the criminals that are on the TV.

He notice the way their fingers flickers, and he his heart pace is starting to get faster and faster. But the men stop abruptly when a guy, younger than himself, says something on another language, and they turn around instead.

He doesn’t know who this lad is, but he’s grateful of whatever it was that he said. When he comes nearer, his fingertips starts to itch really badly and it gets only worse when he’s just a meter away.

 

Zayn is sixteen when he sees Louis for the first time.

He sees the expensive blazer and the Rolex on his wrist through the corner of his eye, and he knows that the brunette doesn’t belong there. Yet he feels like home, there’s something familiar with him, something that he can’t put his finger on.

He notices that his uncle and his father’s friends are behaving hostile towards the older guy, and he knows that Zayn is the man to intervene if he wants to protect him.

He hisses at Sabir that he knows the stranger and that he’s just some kid from his school that was going to hand him over the homework that he had forgotten in his locker.

The men don’t believe his lie, but they accept it and walks away to the ‘Grey house’ where all the druggies hangs around.

He rushes over to him, asks if he’s okay, and the boy tells him his name. He learns to know that his name is Louis, Louis Tomlinson from Doncaster.

There’s something strange with his body, it’s itching like a mosquito bite, and it just gets worse by every second. He can see that he’s skin is turning a bit red, and it’s matching the colour of Louis’ cheeks. 

When he comes nearer the boy, shaking his hand, his fingers stops to itch for just a moment. When their skin doesn’t touch anymore, the itch comes back and it’s even worse than before.

He looks into the blue eyes, and he’s certain that he’s not the only one that felt it.

-

They hang around a few times in the nearest couple of months, and the annoying feeling in their hands always turns up every time they’re near.

Louis is the first one to admit it, that he needs to touch Zayn to make it go away, and Zayn is the first one to accept his offer.

Holding hands is really the only way to make it go away, and if Louis is enjoying it, that’s only positive. He wants to tell Zayn that he doesn’t just wants to be connected to him to ease the feeling, but because he wants to. He wants to reveal that he cares about the jet-black, that he means much more than just a friend. But he knows deep inside that Zayn doesn’t see him the same way, and he has to accept that fact even though it hurts.

 

Zayn on the other hand is afraid of the same thing. He’s scared of what he feels, because a guy isn’t supposed to feel these things for another guy. A bloke is supposed to fall in love with a bird and then get married and have a bunch of kids. Perhaps he’s sick, because he’s never heard of male love before.

When Louis one day presses his lips to Zayn, he doesn’t know what to do. He wants to kiss him back, but in the same time he sees his father’s disappointed expression inside his mind. So he just decides to sit there, not moving his lips in response, and when Louis breaks away, two blurry blue eyes greet him.

He yells at the boy to wait, that he shouldn’t just be running away from him. But Louis doesn’t listen to him, and he finally understands that it doesn’t matter if he has never heard of male love, because he was a fool of letting it go.

-

It takes him three hours of constant calling to Louis’ phone before he finally gets him to answer. He doesn’t even say hello, he only waits for Zayn to choose the right words.

“Lou, I’m so sorry! I was just really… really nervous, but I don’t want you to disappear.”

“So you aren’t frightened of me then.” He whimpers.

“Of course not Lou, you’re my only real friend, and possibly more. Just give me some time to get used to it, okay?”

“Okay.”

 

He collects all the courage he has in his bones over the two latest weeks before he tells the brunette that he’s in love with him, and that he has been for quite a time now. He isn’t really ready to kiss him, not yet anyway, but he knows that he wants to, soon.

When Louis tells him that he’ll wait, that he’s going to be right beside him and wait for the day that he’s ready, Zayn’s heart flutters.

He isn’t sure how long it will take until he’s ready, but he’s glad that he has someone like Louis who wants to wait for him. Because there is something that connects them, and it will never go away even though the time will pass.


End file.
